Friday, June 29, 2012

Tillerwoman and I headed down to Newport yesterday. Not sure where to go we headed down to Fort Adams, home of the famous Laser Fleet 413. This is where I go Laser frostbiting in the winter, but I was curious to see what it was like at Fort Adams in the summer.

There seemed to be a lot of people with the same idea as us. There must have been thousands of cars heading into Fort Adams so we parked in a field and headed down to the fort to see what was going on.
There were a lot of tents around the fort and even inside it. We wandered into one tent and saw some folk taking pictures of a bottomless silver ewer.

What was all that about? Why the fascination with a bottomless silver ewer? I mean, the thing is bottomless so you can't even drink margaritas out of it. Perhaps it was some bottomless silver ewer vendor from Newport promoting his wares? Anyway, since getting advice from Baydog to always carry my iPhone with me, even in the toilet, I snapped a photo of it too.

I was pleased to see that the folks at Fort Adams are very environmentally conscious. They were very keen on recycling and there were stations all over the place where you could fill your reusable water bottles with drinking water FOR FREE!

Tillerwoman and I wandered inside the fort and were pleasantly surprised to see that there were more tents there selling various Rhode Island culinary delights. One of them was run by one of our favorite Rhode Island restaurants, the Matunuck Oyster Bar. So we just had to share a dozen Matunuck oysters. Crisp and briny with a sweet finish. Mmmm!

In search of more sustenance we discovered that Tallulah's Tacos had a stand in the fort too. Tallulah's on Thames is renowned as one of Newport's finest restaurants. They recently launched a new venture, a Taco Truck selling Mexican style tacos and burritos using ingredients from local Rhode Island farmers. So we bought a couple of burritos and headed out of the fort and down to the shoreline of the East Passage of Narragansett Bay to enjoy a quiet picnic.

Wow! It seemed like a lot of other people had had the same idea. There were crowds of people lining the shoreline, enjoying the weather, doing a bit of sunbathing, just hanging out.

Although it seemed that some of them didn't understand English very well. Never mind. America is a nation of immigrants.

As I enjoyed my burrito, I noticed that a lot of the folk in the crowd had cameras and were pointing then across the water to Jamestown. I wonder what they were shooting? Anyway, as this blog seems to have morphed into a photography tips blog this month I thought I would snap a couple of shots of the photographers with their fancy cameras for your viewing pleasure.

After a while some guys in catamarans came out and sailed around a bit and did some sort of informal racing on a ridiculously short course. I mean, we run longer races in Fleet 413. I was pleased to see that these guys could take time off from their day jobs to come and play at sailboat racing on a Thursday afternoon. They clearly had their priorities right.

I was also pleased to see that all these recreational cat sailors were wearing helmets. They must have read the famous sailing blogger Yarg's post about Hard Hats.

So, after a pleasant couple of hours watching the cat sailors having fun, Tillerwoman and I went home and watered our garden and had a chicken salad for dinner and watched the sunset.

Life is good.

What's that you say?

You thought this was a sailing blog? Whatever gave you that idea?

You wanted pictures of cool boats?

OK. OK. I like boats too.

Here is a picture of a really cool boat I saw in Newport yesterday. Enjoy!!

I like the picture of people on the rocks, but then I like almost anything on the rocks.

This sounds like it was a perfect event to learn some of the shortcomings of small, simple cameras. Usually, you'll come home from such an event and your wife will ask to see all of the pictures you took of the catamarans that everyone was making such a fuss about, and all you'll have to show are pictures of water with little white dots in the background.

Tell her that you are an artist who avoids the obvious cliches of life, in search of those quirky, elusive moments that capture more poignant lessons - moments like people sitting on the rocks.

After all, part of becoming an artist is developing a personal style and learning how to sell your ideas, and this is much less costly and frustrating than having to get involved with fancy camera gear.

To be honest I did take a lot of pictures of the catamarans with my iPhone.

Some of them are OK, but only OK. Given the number of professionals covering this event, some from boats close to the racing, and the wide availability of excellent photos and videos on the web of Thursday's action, there seemed little point in my posting some only OK photos. Mitch did teach us about "culling."

And some of my photos could certainly be used to illustrate the shortcomings of a camera-phone that others have written about in our photographic tips series.

I decided while still at Fort Adams to write an unconventional post about our day out. Didn't someone once say that this blog is "quirky enough to be unique?" I do have a reputation to maintain.

I am really intrigued by the boat for rent - it seems to come with its own dock attached - how convenient, you can stop anywhere you like and you are already tied up to the dock. A real plus for renting it.

Copyright

Some of the photos and other images on this blog have been collected from the world wide web and republished here to illustrate my writings. These images are not being represented as my own. Copyright still belongs to the original owner or creator of each image.
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